Dear Cleda,

I have been trying to keep up with my correspondence but slowly but surely have been losing ground. That’s the reason I have been doubling up on my letters. I thought by sending them to the P.O. that you would get them sooner. I’ll try to write a little more but my intentions have really been good. I and another boy went into Los Angeles Sat. Night. It took us 4 hours to get in and it was 11: PM. Then so it was too late to go to Aunt Mollie’s then. I was going to go out in the morning but we couldn’t find a single place to stay and finally decided to come back to the base.  We got back about 4:AM. That was going 23 hrs. Without any sleep.

Then we had our parade and a speech by the Gov.^[1]Earl Warren and Gen. Cousins which meant we were standing at attention for about 2 hours. To top things off I had guard duty last night from 10 PM. Till 3 AM. So I got two more hours of sleep. I am going to bed pretty soon and try to catch up a little because I have really been dragging around today. I am sending a clipping talking of the God’s visit.

School is going fine so-far, but everyone is anxious to start flying. We are now considered upper class men because we have been going for 3 weeks. They really have a marvelous teaching system here and all the instructors are really experts in their line. I think you would have to go a good ways to find a place where they can teach as much in a short time as they do here. We are even taking a new tactical course now which is intended to teach us how to take care of ourselves no matter where we would happen to be forced down. It is really very interesting and can’t be taken lightly.

It is too bad about Bill B. Do they think he will get a medical discharge?

The marks were the code we have been learning. We have a 5 word/min check tomorrow. It is coming better for me. After you start taking more than 2 words a min, you can’t count the dots and dashes so from there on it is getting the rhythm of each letter. You find yourself making up saying for the harder words such as Q which is dah-dah-di-dah you say “pay day today.”

Well 5:00AM. rolls around pretty fast so had better get some sleep.

Love, Tom